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Congress in Wonderland: The Testimony of Barack Obama

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the right wing media’s obsession with doing whatever harm they can to Barack Obama’s presidency, regardless of the truth of any the allegations. At the time I wrote that column, Cliven Bundy had not yet made the mind-numbing racist comments about African-Americans which caused most of his supporters to run for cover. So Bundy is not going to end up on Mt. Rushmore after all. But as I suggested in that column, Fox News, Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, et al are not going to let a little inconvenient truth get in the way of the mission that Americans for Prosperity are paying them to complete. So if not Bundy, who or what is next for the anti-Obama media machine?

Hold on to your seats. It’s Benghazi! Yup, here we go again. House Speaker John Boehner has announced yet another “investigation” of that tragic night in 2012 when American foreign service workers were attacked and killed by Libyan terrorists. Despite conclusions drawn from countless hearings and testimony from hundreds of people who were actually involved in the crisis that there was no orchestrated cover-up of any kind by the President or his staff, the GOP and those who finance their disdain for the President just can’t give it up.
I’ve read the entire 85 page report from the Senate Intelligence Committee; and while the tragic events of those two days in 2012 are often hard to read about, it’s very clear that what happened in Benghazi has happened all too often before. The danger of being an American on foreign soil became very real, and heroic efforts by a large number of people were unable to save the lives of all those under attack. Confusion, bureaucratic overlap, communication breakdown, and outright panic all contributed in some way to the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others.

Instead of lining up behind the Administration as Congress has always done in the past when America is under attack, this Congress, fueled by a hysterical right-wing media frenzy, and a whole lot of Koch Brothers money, immediately began to undermine the efforts of our intelligence community to get to the bottom of the crisis.
So the only way to satisfy the Benghazi United Front For Open Oversight Now! (BUFFOON) is to have President Obama subvert the spirit of the Constitution and the separation of powers and actually appear before Boehner’s latest dog and pony show. Here’s how I imagine that testimony to go.

B: Thank you for coming Mr. President as we attempt to uncover the facts about the greatest tragedy in American history.

O: Uh, greatest?

B: There you go again, minimizing the tragedy to escape any responsibility.

O: I’m sorry. While I’m deeply saddened at the loss of life at Benghazi, I just thought that maybe 9/11 or Pearl Harbor was a greater tragedy.

B: Did those events happen when you were President? And remember you’re under oath.

O: Well of course not!

B: So you’re suggesting that something that happened while you were not President is possibly a greater tragedy than something that happened while you were President?

O: I was just looking at the scope of the carnage and the resulting effects on history.

B: Will the committee please note that the President is being hostile and unresponsive. So when exactly did you decide to cover up your administration’s errors at Benghazi?

O: That’s an unfair question. It’s like asking when I stopped beating my wife. No matter how I answer it, I’m admitting guilt.

B: You beat your wife? Why hasn’t THAT been on Fox News?

O: It was a metaphor. Of course I’ve never beaten Michelle.

B: If that’s your story, fine. But expect us to look into that. (whispers to his aid who gets a nod from Sean Hannity seated in the VIP section.) Back to Benghazi. I show you this photo of the beaten and burned body of Ambassador Christopher Stevens. What role did your administration play in this most awful event since the Voting Rights Act?

O: (stumbling) Uh…Voting Rights Act?…Uh…well you know that photo is a complete fake, right? That is NOT Ambassador Stevens.

B: Right, we know. But if it actually was him, what role would you have played in his death?

O: (hopelessly looking around) I’m sorry. What?

B: Again, will the committee please note that the President is being hostile and unresponsive.

O: OK, you win. In order to bring this Benghazi thing to a rest, I am ordering that Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton be arrested and sent to Guantanamo for questioning. I will authorize any measures, including torture, until they confess their roles in planning the attack on the embassy and the cover up that followed. I will release the tapes showing our planning meetings where we tried to outfox you guys (laughter from the gallery) in bringing this tragedy to fruition.

B: (stammers) So…so…so… you DID plan it all?

O: You’re not going to stop this nonsense until I say I did, right? Regardless of any evidence, common sense, historical perspective, or logic you’re going to dog me just to distract the country from the mess you’ve made of Congress. So, yes, I did it. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Now can we move on?

B: One last question, Mr. President. Exactly where did you say you were born?